Causes of Childhood Obesity Essay

Causes of puerility Obesity Childhood Obesity has become a growing line with children today. Obesity now affects 17% of all children in the United States-triple the localize from just one generation ago (CDC). There be quadruplex reasons that more and more children argon becoming telling. The decrease in bodily activeness, along with increased amounts of television, computers, and video games is one. Higher calorie and sugar wasting disease is another reason for the rising numbers. Childhood corpulency is a major(ip) concern for the next generation.If the public is not educated on the dangers of puerility corpulency it will continue to increase and endanger the lives and future of the children of the tomorrow. why is the obesity increasing in todays youth? much families have both caretakers working extracurricular the house now than in the retiring(a) years. Which means that children are more likely to get operate to school rather then walk or ride their bikes and su bsequently school it either leaves children home by themselves, or at aft(prenominal)ward school programs. One third of children are not getting the recommended levels of buffer or vigorous activity, 10 percent are completely sluggish (IOM).Children of today are spending more and more time session inside not doing anything visible compared to a few generations ago. They are to a fault taking in too many calories due to the larger circle sizes, and high sugar intake. In the last, few years schools are trying to or already have succeeded in decreasing the amount of gap or satisfy time the children have during the day, along with cutting after school sports and activities (HHS). Only about one-third of elementary children have day-after-day physical education, and slight than one- fifth have extracurricular physical activity programs at their school (YRBSS).Forty years ago, kids had representing fields to play on, parks to run around, there was no problem with traffic so they used to go out on the street to play, but that was the past (Fiona MacRae). Today, kids come home because they do not have, or female genitalsnot get to a park, or recr ingestion center, and it is not as safe to play outside as it was years ago so there is no physical activity. Without regular daily cardio exercise, studies have shown that children are putting themselves at danger for more heath related problems, which can lead to shorter sprightlinessspans.The way children eat today is much different from even one generation ago. Children are taking in more calories, sugars and eating more foods that are less healthy. Since parents are working when children come home after school, there is no one to monitor what or how much they are eating. Families are also not eating as healthy as they were in the past. Children are eating dinners that are microwaved, or come out of a knock they are eating Supersized fast food meals that have little no nutritional values. School luncheon programs are also to blame for the come near in the numbers of everywhereweight children.Research has demonstrated that buying lunch at school significantly increases the risk of becoming overweight. The pervasiveness of school a la carte and vending programs that sell foods and beverages that are high in calories and low in nutrients is well-documented. However, the food provided is constrained by budgetary and regulative issues largely external to public health concerns. US De servingment of land guidelines require school food programs to provide minimum quantities of specific nutrients over a 3- to 7-day span but do not address level best food amounts (Wilkinson).Television is playing a big part on how and what are children are eating. They see commercials for drinks that sound and taste good, but the naive realism is that are loaded with sugars and High consumption of sugar drinks, which have few, if any, nutrients, has been associated with obesity (Vartanian). Thirty year s ago, a bottle of Coke was 10 ounces. Today, a kid can get a 64-ounce Big Gulp and when flash is taken into account, it is cheaper. Economically, we really encourage people to over consume, Stang says.She compares portion sizes in 1957 and today hamburger patties have gone from one ounce to sextuplet muffins have gone from 1 1/ 2 ounces to half a pound and movie popcorn has ballooned from three cups to 16 (Cross). Academically, childhood obesity affects how children preform in school. When compared with children who were never obese, boys and girls whose obesity persisted from the start of kindergarten through fifth grade performed worse on the math test, starting in initiatory grade, and their lower performance continued through fifth grade.For boys whose obesity emerged later (in third or fifth grade), no such differences were found, and for girls who became obese later, poorer math performance was temporary. In addition, for girls who were persistently obese, having fewer s ocietal skills explained some part of their poorer math performance. In addition, for both boys and girls who were persistently obese, feeling sadder, lonelier, and more glowing also explained some of their poorer math performance (. Childhood obesity can lead to serious short and long-term health conditions, physical and mental illness as well as a lower pure tone of life.Obese children are more likely to have respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high ancestry pressure, type 2 diabetes, as well as ear wander and throat conditions. As obese children get older, they have a great chance of becoming obese adults, which leads to heart disease, stroke, and several types of cancer (Deckelbaum). The nimble consequence of being overweight as perceived by children themselves is social discrimination and low self-esteem. In a recent, study by Schwimmer, et. al. 2003), obese children rated their quality of life with scores as low as those of small ca ncer patients on chemotherapy. In the study, 106 children aged 5 to 18 fill out a questionnaire used by pediatricians to evaluate quality of life issues. Children were asked to rate things like their ability to walk more than one block, play sports, sleep well, get along with others, and keep up in school. The results indicated that that teaser at school, difficulties playing sports, fatigue, sleep apnea and other obesity-linked problems severely affected obese childrens well-being.